By Jheri Hardaway
Staff Writer
Across North Carolina, we take immense pride in what our hands build. From the furniture factories that anchored the Piedmont to the textile mills that shaped generations, our state’s working class has always been the engine of its prosperity. Today, when state leaders talk about North Carolina’s modern manufacturing prowess, they point to biotech in the Triangle, automotive plants in the Triad, and aviation facilities in the east. Quietly, woven directly into our assembly lines, tech corridors, and university laboratories, lies an economic infrastructure that rarely gets discussed in polite conversation: the war industry.
While public attention often fixes on federal military bases like Fort Bragg, Camp Lejeune, and Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, an interconnected network of private defense contractors, weapons sub-assemblers, and higher-education institutions has turned North Carolina into an indispensable gear in the global defense machine. To understand the scale of this footprint—and how it quietly recruits the next generation of students—we have to examine the hard numbers and see how our state stacks up against national benchmarks.
To grasp the defense footprint, let's look at North Carolina’s manufacturing muscle. North Carolina is home to more than 10,000 manufacturing facilities, employing roughly 465,000 to 475,000 workers, the largest manufacturing workforce in the southeastern United States according to the North Carolina Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NCMEP) and the NC Department of Commerce. Manufacturing generates between 12% and 15% of North Carolina’s total Gross Domestic Product (GDP), standing as the second-largest overall contributor to the state’s economy behind the combined finance, insurance, and real estate sector. By comparison, the national average for manufacturing's share of U.S. GDP hovers around 9.5% to 9.8%, and nationally, manufacturing accounts for less than 8% of non-farm employment. In North Carolina, industrial production punches significantly above the national benchmark, providing the physical foundation upon which the defense sector relies.
When evaluating the defense sector as a whole, combining active installations, military personnel spending, and industrial production, defense represents an economic impact between $66 billion and $80 billion annually. That accounts for 9% to 11% of North Carolina’s total GDP, making it the state's second-largest economic sector, surpassed only by agriculture, as shared by the North Carolina Military Affairs Commission (NCMAC). Nationally, defense spending accounts for roughly 3.4% of the United States’ GDP. In North Carolina, the military and defense footprint constitutes nearly three times the national average in terms of overall state economic reliance. Within private industry, North Carolina does not typically build the final, headline-grabbing battleships or assemble nuclear warheads. Instead, the state specializes in the critical, high-tier supplier network. Between 250 and 400 manufacturing establishments in North Carolina are directly categorized under arms, tactical equipment, munitions, military aerospace components, and combat systems.
More than 3,600 registered defense contractors and suppliers operate statewide, capturing between $6 billion and $8.5 billion annually in direct federal Department of Defense (DoD) procurement awards and prime subcontracts. Direct employment in weapons, tactical systems, and military aerospace manufacturing sits between 40,000 and 60,000 skilled workers, a figure that expands to over 578,000 jobs when accounting for direct, indirect, and induced defense-tied employment statewide.
From RTX (Pratt & Whitney) producing military jet engine components in Asheville, to GM Defense rolling out Infantry Squad Vehicles in Concord, to Corvid Technologies modeling missile-intercept ballistics in Mooresville, North Carolina’s workshops are deeply integrated into frontline military hardware.
Perhaps the least understood dimension of the war industry is where it draws its intellectual capital. It actively cultivates talent inside North Carolina’s high schools, community colleges, and university lecture halls. Nationwide, defense contractors report major workforce shortages as an older generation of defense engineers and machinists retires. North Carolina has stepped in as an educational pipeline, funneling an estimated 1,500 to 3,000 college and trade students annually into defense, intelligence, and weapons-support careers through co-ops, sponsored capstones, apprenticeships, and direct hiring.
A key example is the Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing (ATDM) consortium, which partners with regional community colleges to train young technicians in precision machining, non-destructive testing, and naval welding for submarine and missile construction. The program boasts an approximate 80% job-placement rate into defense contractors within two months of graduation.
At the university level, North Carolina A&T State University, the nation’s largest Historically Black University (HBCU) was designated as one of only four national pilot institutions for the DoD’s Defense Civilian Training Corps (DCTC). Other pilot universities include Purdue University, University of Arizona, and Virginia Tech. The initiative offers full tuition scholarships, monthly living stipends, and guaranteed summer internships that convert directly into full-time civilian defense and acquisition roles upon graduation.
Similarly, NC State University’s Defense and Security Institute (DSI) and the UNC System's formal partnerships with the XVIII Airborne Corps (Army Pathfinder) ensure that undergraduate and graduate researchers work hand-in-hand with military personnel on tactical software, drone autonomy, and battlefield robotics.
At least 12 to 16 North Carolina institutions, including N.C. State, Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, and N.C. A&T, UNC Charlotte, East Carolina University, Wake Forest, and regional community colleges collect hundreds of millions of dollars annually in Department of Defense research contracts and federal grants. While public marketing often highlights "dual-use technology" or general innovation, federal budget ledgers show these funds are earmarked for concrete, mission-critical military objectives: Lethal Systems, Hypersonics & Advanced Materials, Autonomous Swarms & Battlefield AI, Trauma Medicine & Counter-WMD Defense, Supply Chain Retooling and more. Through the Defense Manufacturing Community Support Program, entities like NC State’s Industry Expansion Solutions receive multi-million-dollar grants specifically to upgrade the cybersecurity, quality assurance, and tool-and-die infrastructure of small, rural North Carolina machine shops so they can produce certified components for naval ordnance and nuclear submarines.
Overall, North Carolina’s economic health is tied closely to national defense spending. Our state is not alone; the AI sector is also pivoting to defense contracts.
On Democracy Now! in January of 2026, Karen Hao explained that companies like OpenAI are turning to the defense industry because they have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on AI development and need to recoup those costs. She notes, "There are only so many industries and so many places that have that size of a paycheck to pay. And so that's why we're seeing a cozying up to the defense industry." (Time Stamp 05:48 - 06:15).
While federal contracts bring steady jobs, competitive wages, and specialized research funding into our communities, they also tie our local economy and student talent directly to geopolitical conflict and defense policy. As our state continues to grow as an industrial powerhouse, confronting the true nature of what we build, who pays for it, and where our graduates go is essential to understanding the full picture of North Carolina's economic future.
